Dear Friends in Christ,

 This Sunday we observe two different revelations of God.  

At Zion, the Baby Jesus is acknowledged as a gift from God by three wisemen who come from the East to pay him homage.

At St Anne’s, the clouds separate and a light from heaven comes down and rests on Jesus. A voice declares, This is my son. Listen to him.

Jesus stood in line to be baptized.  He did not jump the line.  He did not ask for or receive special treatment.  Jesus went out into the desert to find John and be baptized by John so that he could be one with his people’s yearning for a better world for themselves and their children.  

The people standing in line with Jesus had no idea who Jesus was until the heavens let them know.

When Jesus was baptized by his cousin John, Jesus was not holding a checklist of things he had to accomplish before God would acknowledge him as his own.

Cold and wet, disoriented by his dip into the River Jordan, Jesus was at his most vulnerable.  He was at his most human when the heavens opened and God declared him to be God’s son.

The light shone, not just on Jesus, but also on the crowd that surrounded him.  God’s message on that day was not only about who Jesus is, but who God wants to be in our lives:  A God who acknowledges our desire to be better and more holy and loves us into fulfilling that desire.  A God who illumines the world that we live in and wants to help us find our way in that world.  A God who does not observe us from some safe place in God’s heaven,  but joins us when we stand in line for what we need. 

God loves us even when we are not patiently standing in line.  God loves us when we are angry, when we are confused, when we are selfish.  For us, God sent his son.

Today, the New York Times published a snippet of Renee Good’s writings:

The Bible and Qur’an and Bhagavad Gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths ‘make room for wonder’ —

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca